Extreme poverty is a condition of living characterized by chronic hunger, disease, illiteracy and squalid surrounding; conditions that are far below a reasonable definition of human decency, majority of the poverty afflicted persons living in Africa, with most of those affected being women. The African woman has traditionally be the manager within her household providing food, water, health and education, she has been active in agriculture as well as the guardian of children’s welfare with the implicit responsibility to provide for them materially. It is therefore obvious that the high failure rate of development policies and programmes should be attributed in part to the neglect of lack of knowledge of this dual role of women in combining economic activities with child care roles.
There is therefore an urgent need for a concerted effort towards the empowerment of the African woman for more effective participation in world’s economic development. Intervention Council for Women in Africa (ICWA) has been conceived to take some responsibilities and initiative in making contributions towards the up-liftment of the African woman through entrepreneurship development, education and various poverty alleviation programs. These, among many other things, will include a vocational and entrepreneurial centre.
Intervention Council for Women in Africa is a non-governmental organisation that promotes women's economic empowerment. When women are economically empowered, they can help to ease corruption and violence, promote greater environmental sustainability, and through education,  they can lower birth rates, help lower HIV/AIDS distribution rates. If this kind of process is accepted by society, then it should be apparent that women's education and economic empowerment is not only a matter of human rights but also human security.